Rain down grace!

July 6, 2025 • Fourth Sunday after Pentecost
Scripture Lesson: Luke 9:54
Rev. K Karpen

[You can view the full worship video recording at: https://youtu.be/vm2hOoB9564]

When his disciples James and John saw this refusal of hospitality, they said, “Lord, do you want us to command fire to come down from heaven and consume them?” Luke 9:54

I’ll start by admitting that this is a strange piece of scripture.

I’ll also admit that there are so many times over the last several months when I have briefly fantasized over the idea of calling down fire from heaven on someone or something.

I’ll admit that the unredeemed part of me would like nothing better, than having the ability to, from time to time, call down a little fire, a little righteous fire, on some group of folks.

I think it’s the time we’re in, when we’re faced with the daily insensitivity and hypocrisy, the capricious cruelty of our days. Of our government.

I just want to call down a little fire. Get it all to stop. Even for a few minutes.

Get it to stop.

And so, it’s hard for me to be hard on James and John, these benighted disciples of Jesus. These followers of Jesus who don’t always want to follow the way of Jesus. Who sometimes get in the way of Jesus.

Just to set the context. Luke starts by telling us that things are reaching a critical point in the life and ministry of Jesus. Luke says, ‘the days are drawing near for Jesus to be taken up’. The beginning of the end. And so Jesus sets his face to go to Jerusalem.

Jerusalem! whose name literally means ‘a place of peace’, but is a place that rarely knows peace, then or now.

Jerusalem, the city of destiny. The city, where according to Jesus himself, prophets go to die.

When we hear that Jesus ‘sets his face’, that’s Biblical shorthand for his intention, his resolve to go to Jerusalem. You’ll learn quickly that I’m easily distracted, no matter my intention… but Jesus is resolved.

He’s on this journey. We don’t exactly know the route, but we know the destination. It’s not going to be a quick trip. He’s not in a hurry.

Luke will be telling us a lot of things that happen along the way, because this journey to Jerusalem will take up the next 10 chapters in this book of Luke. Ten chapters full of holy distractions—healings & feedings; parables & prophecy; confrontations & controversy.

We don’t know the route Jesus takes, but we know that the route takes Jesus and his friends through Samaria.

They could have gone around Samaria. And maybe should have gone around Samaria. Because, for Jews at the time, Samaritans are sworn enemies. But Jesus never avoids people who think they are his enemies.

And so, Jesus sends his advance team into a Samaritan village to make arrangements for them all to stay there in the village. To arrange a place to sleep for the night. But the people of the village are having none of it, because, it says, his face is set toward Jerusalem. And Samaritans don’t recognize Jerusalem as the city of God, the center of the worship of God.

Samaritans have common roots with Jewish people, but they pray differently, they look a bit different, their customs are different, their language is a little different. And there’s distrust & and racism & xenophobia on both sides.

And so, when this advance team for Jesus enters the village of the Samaritans to find a place to stay, they are met with animosity and the refusal to offer hospitality.

Providing hospitality to strangers is a core value across middle eastern cultures, then and now. It lies behind the repeated commandments in our scriptures to welcome the stranger, make space for the immigrant and refugee. Treat the foreigner as family. Verses of the Bible we would do well to remember in our times.

So this refusal to offer hospitality is a cardinal sin in the culture of the ancient near east. After all, the refusal of people to offer hospitality is what caused the city of Sodom to be destroyed, back in Genesis.

And so, in shock and dismay at such a breach of culture, this violation of common humanity, and maybe with that Genesis story in mind, James and John go to Jesus with this offer:

“Lord, do you want us to command fire to come down from heaven and consume them?”

First, that’s kind of an ambitious offer, because a few verses earlier, when those disciples were asked to offer health care to a child, they can’t do anything. So I imagine that maybe Jesus’ first reaction might have been, ‘Oh, really? You think you can do that??’

But Jesus is mostly just completely appalled by this offer from these followers of Jesus who just don’t want to follow the way of Jesus.

The way of love and justice, of compassion and reconciliation.

So Jesus turns and he rebukes them! He calls them out. Reprimands them. And then sends them on to a different village. Instead of condemning these Samaritans, gives them space. He gives them grace.

It’s a funny thing about Jesus. Jesus never tells us not to have enemies. He had plenty of enemies. He just tells us what to do with them once we have them. Love them. And in this case, loving them means leaving them alone. Do you have people in your life you need to love by leaving them alone? I have a few.

For me, this story about the disciples and the Samaritan village is a story about what it means to follow Jesus. What it means to treat people with grace even when we’d love to do something different. What it means to follow the way of love and justice, compassion and reconciliation, especially when we don’t feel like it.

When you read through the Gospels, Jesus rarely says ‘believe in me.’ But he’s always saying, ‘follow me.’ And that ‘follow me’ is always an invitation, rather than an instruction.

So, when the Samaritans in that village say, ‘No thank you, we’re good. Jesus is okay with that. He respects their choice, even though it’s a rejection. Even though it costs him and his friends a place to sleep for the night.

So much of what passes for Christianity in America seems so foreign to the way of Jesus. I don’t know why that is, but it’s been that way for a long time.

On this July 4th weekend, I’ve been thinking again of the long-ago words of the Methodist preacher and activist Frederick Douglass, who in his 1852 speech, What to the Slave is the Fourth of July? drew a distinction between the Christianity of Christ, and the Christianity of America.

American Christianity, Douglass said, Strips the love of God of its beauty, and leaves the throne of religion a huge, horrible repulsive form… an abomination in the sight of God.

Ouch. Harsh language. But what else can you say about a form of Christianity that, then and now, values some people over others, that operates not out of grace but condemnation, that turns faith into fire, that values retribution over reparation, that sanctions violence and calls compassion a sin? What else can you say?

The Christianity of Christ offers something very different to the world, and to us. And maybe the world needs it. And maybe we need it. The Christianity of Christ is never about a reign of terror & condemnation.

It’s about raining down grace. It’s about following Jesus.

So, what does it mean to follow Jesus?
To me, it means to do the things Jesus did.
To love unconditionally. To welcome the stranger.
To feed the hungry, heal the sick, cast out demons.
Comfort the afflicted, challenge the comfortable.
To embody the love of God, incarnate compassion, like Jesus did.

It’s not easy. It never was. It comes at a cost.

That’s why Luke goes on to tell us more of the story, more of the encounters, the holy distractions, Jesus meets along the road.

That’s why, when someone tells him, ‘I’ll follow you anywhere!’ Jesus responds with the bit about foxes having dens and birds having nests, but he has no place to lay his head. He’s just been refused a bed for the night!

That’s why Jesus says, ‘Let the dead bury their dead, but as for you go and proclaim the kin-dom of God’, the way of love and justice.

That’s why he says, ‘No one who puts a hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kin-dom of God.’

As that other Methodist preacher and activist Harriet Tubman is quoted as saying: ‘Keep going. Don’t stop. The way out is forward.’

Friends there will always be those whose answer is to call down fire.

And in these days, when in our name and with our money, those in power call down fire on Gaza, call down fire on Iran, and pray over those bombs in the name of God, we need to tell a different story.

In these days, when in our name families are torn apart, safety and asylum is denied, and health care is withheld and defunded, all applauded by some who wear the name of Christ,

We need to tell a different story.

It’s not easy. It never was.

But I think it’s our calling. It’s a high calling: To rain down grace, even when we want to call down fire. I pray for the strength & resolve to do that.

In the power, presence, and perseverance of the God of grace. Amen.

Suggested reflection questions for conversation:

• Who in your life could receive grace rather than retribution?

• What does it mean to you to follow Jesus? Is that something that resonates for you?

• How could Church of the Village more authentically follow Jesus?

Copyright (c) 2025 - K Karpen
All rights reserved.